Esselen was the language of the

Esselen The Esselen are a Native American people belonging to a linguistic group in the hypothetical Hokan language family, who are indigenous to the Santa Lucia Mountains of a region south of the Big Sur River in Big Sur, Monterey County, Califor ...

(or self-designated ''Huelel'') Nation, which aboriginally occupied the mountainous

Central Coast of California The Central Coast is an area of California, roughly spanning the coastal region between Point Mugu and Monterey Bay. It lies northwest of Los Angeles County and south of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and includes the rugged, undevelop ...

, immediately south of

Monterey Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bot ...

(Shaul 1995). It was probably a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...

, though has been included as a part of the hypothetical Hokan proposal.

Names

The name ''Esselen'' was derived from a village name. The Esselen people referred to their own language as ''Huelel''. The name was recorded by

Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta (1780–1842) was a Spanish Franciscan missionary and linguist notable for his work on native languages. Arroyo de la Cuesta was born in Cubo de Bureba, Burgos, Spain in 1780. He arrived in the Spanish territory of A ...

on May 18, 1832 at Soledad Mission from his informant Eusebio (native name ''Sutasis'') (cf. ''villel'' 'tongue' as recorded by

Dionisio Alcalá Galiano Dionisio Alcalá Galiano (8 October 1760 – 21 October 1805) was a Spanish naval officer, cartographer, and explorer. He mapped various coastlines in Europe and the Americas with unprecedented accuracy using new technology such as chronomete ...

) (Shaul 1995).

Historical background

French explorer Jean La Perouse, who visited Monterey in 1786, reported: Esselen may have been the first Californian language to become

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

. Although it was spoken by many of the early converts at Mission Carmel, its use rapidly declined during the Hispanic period. Very little information on the vocabulary and grammar of Esselen was preserved. About 350 words and phrases and a few complete sentences have been preserved in literature, including a short bilingual catechism (for a summary see Mithun 1999:411–413 and Golla 2011:114). By the beginning of the 20th century the only data on Esselen that investigators such as Kroeber and Harrington could collect were a few words remembered by speakers of other Indian languages in the area.

Classification

H. W. Henshaw thought that Esselen represented a monotypic linguistic family. Others, such as Shaul (2019), have assigned the language to the proposed Hokan family. While it is likely that much of Dixon & Kroeber's Hokan-Penutian model will stand the test of time, the subject matter is both complex and poorly understood, and is thus subject to revision. Shaul (2019) also notes that Esselen has had extensive contact with the

Chumashan languages Chumashan was a family of languages that were spoken on the southern California coast by Native American Chumash people, from the Coastal plains and valleys of San Luis Obispo to Malibu, neighboring inland and Transverse Ranges valleys and c ...

, with Esselen and Chumashan sharing many common lexical items.

Dialects

The Esselen language consisted of the Western and Eastern dialects. Documentation of Western Esselen was based on data collected at Mission Carmel. It was spoken by the Excelen local tribe, and likely also the Ecgeajan local tribes to the south along the

Big Sur Big Sur () is a rugged and mountainous section of the Central Coast of California between Carmel and San Simeon, where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. It is frequently praised for its dramatic scenery. Big Sur ...

coast, although the Ecgeajan subdialect is unattested. Eastern Esselen was documented by Arroyo, and was based on data collected at Mission Soledad, which hosted Arroyo Seco local tribes. Eastern Esselen was spoken by the Eslenajan local tribe, and probably also by the Aspasniajan and Imunajan local tribes. The Esselen language was spoken by five local tribes. Each of the five local tribes spoke a separate subdialect. *Western **''Excelen'': upper Carmel Valley **''Ecgeajan'': along the

coast *Eastern **''Imunajan'': along the Arroyo Seco, just south of Mission Soledad **''Eslenajan'' (or ''Eslen''): north of Mission Soledad **''Aspasniajan'': just south of the present day town of

Greenfield Greenfield or Greenfields may refer to: Engineering and Business * Greenfield agreement, an employment agreement for a new organisation * Greenfield investment, the investment in a structure in an area where no previous facilities exist * Greenf ...

The

Santa Lucia Mountains The Santa Lucia Mountains (sæntə luˈsiːə) or Santa Lucia Range is a rugged mountain range in coastal central California, running from Carmel southeast for to the Cuyama River in San Luis Obispo County. The range is never more than from ...

formed the heart of the Esselen homeland. Each Esselen district consisted of a local tribe with their own patrilineal clans. Members of the clans were exogamous, marrying members of other clans but within the local tribe. Esselen local tribes and their demographics are surveyed in Milliken (1990: 59). Breschini and Haversat (1994: 82-88) give the following numbers of villages and population estimates for each of the five Esselen tribes. Population estimates are calculated by multiplying the number of villages by either 30 or 40 (i.e., the presumed number of individuals per village).Breschini, Gary and Trudy Haversat. 1994. ''An Overview of the Esselen Indians of Central Monterey County, California''. Salinas, CA: Coyote Press.

Phonological and lexical differences

Sound correspondences In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

between the Western and Eastern dialects: Lexical differences between the Western and Eastern dialects:

Phonology

has allophones of and . has an allophone of .

Pronouns

Subject pronouns in Western Esselen (Shaul 2019: 89): : Subject pronouns in Eastern Esselen (Shaul 2019: 89): :

Syntax

Word order is primarily SOV (Shaul 2019).

Lexicon

Shaul (1995) reconstitutes Esselen vocabulary, synthesized from various historical sources, as follows.Shaul, David L. 1995. "The Huelel (Esselen) Language." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 61:191-239. Forms from

Alfred L. Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...

are marked by (''Kr'').

Numbers

References

Bibliography

* Golla, Victor. 2011. ''California Indian Languages.'' University of California Press. * Mithun, Marianne. 1999. ''The Languages of Native North America''. Cambridge University Press. * Shaul, David L. 1995. "The Huelel (Esselen) Language." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 61:191-239.

External links

Esselen language
overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Spanish-Rumsen-Esselen Glossary
1802
Salinan-Esselen vocabulary
p. 73
Esselen at the California Language Archive

OLAC resources in and about the Esselen language

Esselen, The World Atlas of Language Structures
{{North American languages Indigenous languages of California Language isolates of North America Extinct languages of North America Hokan languages Languages extinct in the 19th century 19th-century disestablishments in California